For surfactants and surface treatment agents with fluorochemical chains, longer perfluoroalkyl chains contain a higher percentage of fluorine at a given concentration and typically provide better performance. However, the fluorinated materials derived from longer perfluoroalkyl chains are more expensive. Reduction of the fluorine content with delivery of the same or higher performance is therefore desirable. Reducing the fluorine content would reduce the cost, but it is necessary to maintain product performance.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,719,698 discloses the reaction of a primary alkyl amine with two equivalents of a fluorinated acrylate-type ester to provide an addition product useful as water and oil repellent finish for fabrics.
It is desirable to improve surfactant performance and to increase the fluorine efficiency, i.e., boost the efficiency or performance of the surfactants so a lower proportion of the expensive fluorine component is required to achieve the same level of performance, or to have better performance using the same level of fluorine. Especially desirable would be surfactants with similar performance to current commercial products but having shorter perfluoroalkyl tails. The present invention provides such surfactants.